It worked, in the middle of the day even! The old blogger had gotten to where the only time I could publish reliably was 4 AM.

My youngest son at a school concert.
The one directly in the center of the photo.
Doesn’t he look just thrilled?

These are some images our house and immediate surroundings. This is the deck in the back complete with broken washing machine. It ate it’s bearings the other day and we obtained another for free that was advertised on CraigsList but haven’t quite figured out how to get rid of this one yet.

This is the left side of the front of our house and our next door neighbors to the west of us. That strip in between is how we usually access the basement or back yard.

Our house from the front. We have so far resisted cutting down all the trees. Most of our neighbors have eliminated most of theirs.

A shot out the back showing the wonderful gloomy Seattle area weather. One of the brief moments it hasn’t been raining. If you’ve been watching the news, flooding is widespread right now, worst I can remember in recent history.

This is a view from our front porch looking over the driveway of our new neighbors to the east of us. The people that lived there when we moved in both died some time ago of lung disease. Her husband was a ship builder and exposed to asbestos.

This is looking across a neighbors back yard, 6th Ave which you can’t see because it’s below everything, and through trees to a house that’s on 5th avenue on the other side of 6th.

This is looking down the hill in our backyard. When we moved in, this was a thick canopy of woods. An older woman owned all the property below and said that she was not going to develop it. She died and it got sold to developers. They bulldozed the woods below and built three houses on every lot the size of ours. The alders that were on our hillside all died shortly after that, turning what used to be very dense woods into sparse woods.

We live on the corner of two streets, that form a 90 degree turn at our house, and both dead end. This is a view of street we come and leave by.

This is a view up the other street which dead ends at I-5. At least being on the corner of two dead ends limits traffic somewhat.

A view looking out from our front porch.

Our back deck, complete with broken washing machine, taken from our back porch, and the woods, or what remains of them, behind.

Another shot of our back yard with what remains of the woods.

Carl, my oldest son, who is also moved out (but unlike my daughter I get to see and talk to him frequently), and a friend of his, Jeremy, gave me a late birthday present in the form of a couple of tweeters.

It happened that Jeremy had some sitting around he wasn’t using that just happened to be the same make and model as the tweeters I am using. I had cooked one recently when the computer went apeshit and put out some high frequency garbage on the sound card.

So now I’ve got highs in both channels again, yeah!

Glad to see the Democrats got control of the House, hope the Senate follows. Hopefully this will signal and end to the Iraq war, the price gouging by the oil companies, and much of the corruption.

I sure hope now that the Democrats have control of the House, they will allow the impeachment petitions brought forward by both Illinois and California to be brought to the floor as required by the US Constitution.

I do hope that a newly reconstituted House Ethics committee cleans things out.

Very cool resource, found groups for Chinese, so an opportunity to get together and practice and learn.

I want to thank Eric for letting me know about meetup.com. I was amazed at the variety of interests represented there, many things that I am interested in. So that will give me something to pursue.

I also want to thank the girls at The Slip in Kirkland, for being so nice to me when I came in there on my birthday.

Surprisingly, I suffered no hangover from our outing at The Slip last night. The two girls that were working that night were long time employees that recognized us.

Had just two drinks but they made them really strong and was very toasted by the time I got the second down. Of coarse I don’t drink much either so no tolerance probably didn’t help.

She’s cleaning up getting ready to leave. The Slip actually closes at 10:30 on Saturday so no new customers were being served but they don’t kick us out while they’re cleaning up.

Somewhat optimistic mood has carried over to today, even though there is absolutely nothing material that I am aware of that should be the grounds for that.

Maybe it’s just the feeling that a really shitty year is behind.

Had some pleasant and fun dreams for a change too last night instead of the usual dark dreams that I have been having.

I am not being successful at finding meaning and happiness in my life again.

My daughter has been gone for a month and a week now, and I still have multiple crying spells during the day. I’m semi-ok, then something reminds me of her in the past, here, and I lose it.

My wife would do anything within her power to make me happy, but that does not seem to be within her power. It is frustrating to her but I am not good at faking how I feel.

Sometimes I think it would be better if I were just gone from this planet. I wouldn’t bother my daughter anymore, and my wife, while she would be hurt, at least she could start healing instead of being constantly bothered by my state.